You have this big dream or a really exciting idea. Your spirit is brimming with positive energy from the possibility. Your mind is racing with tons of great ideas on how to make it happen. Then you start to think of who you would love to ask to join you.
And then you think to yourself…but who am “I” to ask “them”.
Maybe it’s your boss or the president of your company. Maybe it is the leader of your place of worship. Maybe it is a person you met at a conference last year, but haven’t contacted since. And maybe it is that famous person you really admire and respect whose work is totally aligned with yours. And maybe it is even one of your heroes.
So why don’t you ask them? Of course you have some really valid reasons. At the top of the list is that you think they will say no. But what if they say yes?
If you don’t ask “yes” will never be a possibility.
Kumari Mullin took that risk very recently and was pleasantly surprised by the response. [click to continue...]
In an excellent post on Leadership and Political Correctness, Mike Myatt of N2Growth discusses the debilitating phenomena of political correctness that has unfortunately, as he puts it, “become a dominant mind-set in our society”. In this post he posed the following question:
“Do you ever wonder how the term “Politically Correct” evolved from an obscure catch-phrase that was once used to label those who would not take a controversial position to the dominant mind-set of the day in our society?”
He goes on to make this sobering observation:
“The politically correct assault has invaded classrooms, the media, the work place, federal, state and local government, the judiciary, the church, the military, and even casual discussions with friends and family. It has spread to pandemic proportions, crossing boarders and cultures, such that you’d be hard pressed to actually find someone under the age of 40 who hasn’t had substantial amounts of “diversity training”. [click to continue...]
There are many who believe that once trust has been breached or broken it can never be repaired, at least not to the level that returns the relationship to it’s former state. I absolutely agree with that. Except I believe that while the relationship will never be the same, that does not have to mean it will be worse.
In fact, I believe that in the process of restoring trust you can actually build a relationship that is stronger than it was before. Repairing trust is hard work, but breakdowns provide an incredible opportunity for us to reassess our relationships and make changes in our we interact and work together to make us far more effective going forward.
It is easy to trust someone who has never let us down. But if we are taking any level of risk at all there will be breakdowns, some of which will be caused by us. And rarely do we act fully alone – some breakdowns will happen because we have pushed the boundaries of what is possible given the dynamic of our existing relationships. Unless we use the inevitable breakdowns in an uncertain, rapidly changing world to learn how to trust each other more, we won’t grow to meet the challenges we face, let alone be prepared to take the risks required to do the extraordinary together. [click to continue...]
